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The epic true tale of the vigilante librarian who saved thousands of books from jihadists.

Under the dark cover of night, a team of clandestine agents smuggled contraband on mule carts past the heavily armed militants who policed the ancient streets of Timbuktu...

But this undertaking was a little less "Ocean's Eleven," a little more "Indiana Jones" with an Islamic bent — because the traffickers were librarians, and their black market swag was a vast collection of hundreds of thousands of historical manuscripts dating as far back as the 11th century.


Photo by Francois Xavier Marit/AFP/Getty Images.

The mastermind behind this grand scheme? A middle-aged book collector named Abdel Kader Haidara.

Haidara spent most of his life searching his native Mali and other parts of Western Africa for lost relics from the region's rich history. Over the years, he had amassed thousands of rare and valuable manuscripts, which he preserved, restored, and digitized for future generations.

Haidara's collection included historical chronicles of the rise and fall of Saharan and Sudanese monarchs; ethical quandaries by Islamic philosophers debating everything from polygamy to smoking tobacco; medical volumes full of treatments derived from birds, lizards, or plants; codices hand-bound in lavish materials such as goatskin or fish scale and adorned with glittering gold calligraphy; rare illustrated copies of the Quran itself; and ancient secular writings on astronomy, poetry, and math.

"A lot of people were surprised because they had been told — even at school — that there were no written African historical records," Haidara said in 2014. "But we have hundreds of thousands of these documents in Arabic and in African languages."

Photo by Fred DuFour/AFP/Getty Images.

When the Mali crisis began in May 2012, Haidara quickly realized that Timbuktu's incredible archives were in danger.

An alliance of militant Tuareg rebels and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI) seized a number of northern Malian territories, including Timbuktu. They overthrew the country's president, Amadou Toumani Touré, and imposed Sharia in the now-independent territory of Azawad, banishing anything that fell outside their narrow interpretation of the Quran.

Soon they were demolishing Sufi mausoleums and other Islamic traditions that opposed their own zealotry. Haidara knew it was only a matter of time before they came for the book collections, too.

"The manuscripts show that Islam is a religion of tolerance," he told National Geographic. Haidara believed that the archives could not only change Western perceptions of Islam, but could also refute jihadist dogma — something which the extremists would never allow.

Photo by Fred DuFour/AFP/Getty Images.

Days after the invasion, Haidara called together his colleagues from the Timbuktu library association, who represented 45 different Malian libraries and about 400,000 rare volumes.

As he recalled in the Wall Street Journal, he told the assembled group: “I think we need to take out the manuscripts from the big buildings and disperse them around the city to family houses. We don’t want them finding the collections of manuscripts and stealing them or destroying them.”

With help from family, tour guides, and other archivists, Haidara and his team began buying all of the metal and wooden trunks they could find without arising suspicion. Once they'd bought up all the stock in Timbuktu, they sent their buyers to other markets south of the city, or purchased unused oil drums and barrels to convert for their purposes.

Photo by Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images.

They stored the crates at Mamma Haidara and other libraries throughout the city, where small groups of volunteers would gather at night to carefully pack the delicate manuscripts inside. They worked entirely by flashlight, since the jihadists had cut their access to electricity.

Once the books were packed, they were smuggled by mule carts at night to hiding places under the homes of volunteers across the city.

Photo by Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images.

Within a few months, there were nearly 2,500 footlockers full of manuscripts hidden throughout the city. But moving them out of al-Qaeda territory wouldn't be easy.

Donations began to pour in from Indiegogo and private foundations to help fund strategic smuggling trips by river and by road, moving manuscripts incrementally in order to cut down on potential losses.

But they still had to contend with both extremist border patrols and the Malian army, which was on the lookout for smuggled weapons en route to or from al-Qaeda. Even the French military, which had arrived to help liberate Timbuktu, formed another inadvertent obstacle when it almost fired on a boat full of books, acting under the assumption that they were trafficking firearms.

Photo by Kenzo Tribouillard/AFp/Getty Images.

The operation lasted for nine harrowing months, during which the radicals managed to destroy only 4,000 manuscripts.

Of course, there were plenty of close calls along the way.

Early in the campaign, militant leaders stopped Haidara's nephew, Mohammed Touré, as he was leaving the library late one night with a trunkful of manuscripts. They arrested him for stealing and threatened to cut off his hands. But Haidara swung into action and told the Islamist police that Touré was a legal employee of the museum who was doing his job by taking the books to be repaired.

On another occasion, a fleet of boats carrying 300 footlockers full of books was held hostage by opportunistic hijackers until Haidara could pay the ransom they demanded.

“If we hadn’t acted, I’m almost 100% certain that many, many others would have been burned," Haidara told the Wall Street Journal.


Photo by Evan Schneider/Stringer/Getty Images.

The remaining manuscripts are now safe in climate-controlled storage in Bamako. But they can't stay there forever.

Between the humidity in the Malian capital and the creaking weight of tall stacks of boxes upon boxes threatening to crush the books beneath them, it's only a temporary haven. The Malian government has estimated that it would cost nearly $11 million to build new archives in the capital to properly preserve and restore the codices.

As for Haidara, he received the 2014 Africa Prize from Germany and is the subject of a new book called (appropriately) "The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu." But he's still more concerned about the collection.

"I'm all the time surrounded by worry, by responsibility, sometimes I even forget my family," he told National Geographic. "My only ambition is to rehabilitate all these libraries in Timbuktu, so that I can bring all the manuscripts back to each family that entrusted them to me. That will give me a little bit of peace."

Pop Culture

'Wicked' author says one line in 'The Wizard of Oz' inspired Elphaba and Glinda's backstory

Gregory Maguire says he "fell down to the ground" laughing when the idea hit him.

Public domain

The two witches in "The Wizard of Oz" clearly had a history together.

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or listened to a piece of music and wondered, "How did they come up with that idea?" The creative process is so enigmatic even artists themselves don't always know where their ideas come from, so It's a treat when we get to hear the genesis of a brilliant idea straight from the horse's mouth. If you've watched "Wicked" and wondered where the idea for the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Glinda (the Good Witch) came from, the author of the book has shared the precise moment it came to him.

The hit movie "Wicked" is based on the 20-year-old hit stage musical, which is based on the novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" written by Gregory Maguire. While the musical is a simplified version of the 1995 book, the basic storyline—the origin story of the two witches from "The Wizard of Oz"—lies at the heart of both. In an interview with BBC, Maguire explained how Elphaba and Glinda's friendship popped into his head.

 

Maguire was visiting Beatrix Potter's farm in Cumbria, England, and thinking about "The Wizard of Oz," which he had loved as a child and thought could be an interesting basis for a story about evil.

"I thought 'alright, what do we know about 'The Wizard of Oz' from our memories,'" he said. "We have the house falling on the witch. What do we know about that witch? All we know about that witch is that she has feet. So I began to think about Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West…

 glinda, elphaba, wicked,  In "Wicked," the two Oz witches met as students at Shiz University.  Giphy GIF by Wicked 

"There is one scene in the 1939 film where Billie Burke [Glinda the Good Witch] comes down looking all pink and fluffy, and Margaret Hamilton [the Wicked Witch of the West] is all crawed and crabbed and she says something like, 'I might have known you'd be behind this, Glinda!' This was my memory, and I thought, now why is she using Glinda's first name? They have known each other. Maybe they've known each other for a long time. Maybe they went to college together. And I fell down onto the ground in the Lake District laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together."

In "Wicked," Glinda and the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, meet as students at Shiz University, a school of wizardry. They get placed as roommates, loathe each other at first, but eventually become best friends. The story grows a lot more complicated from there (and the novel goes darker than the stage play), but it's the character development of the two witches and their relationship with one another that force us to examine our ideas about good and evil.

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

 

Maguire also shared with the Denver Center for Performing Arts what had inspired him to use the "Wizard of Oz" characters in the first place.

"I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: 'Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?' I caught myself ready to have a fully formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler – what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime. I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad. I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times. But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. Everybody in America knows who the Wicked Witch of the West is, but nobody really knows anything about her. There is more to her than meets the eye."

 wizard of oz, wicked witch of the west The Wicked Witch of the West has a story of her own.  Giphy  

Authors and artists—and their ideas—help hold a mirror up to humanity for us to see and reflect on who we are, and "Wicked" is one of those stories that makes us take a hard look at what we're seeing in that mirror. Thanks, Gregory Maguire, for launching us on a collective journey that not only entertains but has the potential to change how we see one another.

This story originally appeared last year.

Community

30 cheap and delicious meals frugal people swear they never get sick of

"I could eat one every day of my life if I allowed it to happen."

Image via Canva

Frugal people share cheap meals they love.

Groceries are a major expense these days. And grocery prices are continuing to go up in 2025, according to the USDA. Still, making meals at home versus going out to eat is cheaper, and a big way to save money. But getting creative with low-cost ingredients can be a hang-up.

In an online community of frugal people, member samdaz712 posed the question to fellow savers: "What’s the cheapest meal you actually enjoy eating regularly?"

They continued, "We all have that one budget meal that somehow never gets old. For me, it’s rice, eggs, and frozen mixed veggies with soy sauce and chili flakes. Costs next to nothing, takes 10 minutes, and I actually look forward to it."

The post wrapped up with a call-out for others' favorite and frugal meals. "Curious what everyone else’s go-to cheap meals are not the I’ll suffer through this to save money kind, but the ones you genuinely like and would still eat even if you weren’t budgeting. Always looking for new ideas that don’t break the bank," they added.

Frugal people happily shared their cheap (and yummy) go-to meals. Here are 30 cheap meals that they never get sick of.

"PB&J sandwiches. I could eat one every day of my life if I allowed it to happen. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll make a PB, banana, and honey sandwich. Then I'll pan toast with a generous amount of butter on each side until the bread is golden brown and the PB starts to melt. It's so decadent yet so cheap." - Kom4K

"Fried egg sandwich." - Major9000

"Every week-ish we make pinto beans, smash em up into a refried situation, melt some cheese, spread them on toasted torta bread with avocado. Then use leftovers in your eggs the next day or make burritos for lunch. You can never go wrong with a pot of beans." - BoardNo1459

"A pot of pinto beans with a link of kielbasa sausage and corn bread...Absolute baller." - Bigram03

"'Hobo-potatoes,' diced potatoes, onions, salt and pepper, mixed up in a bag of foil with oil and left to cook in the coals of a camp fire. Goes great with any protein and has more potassium per serving than bananas." - BlaqueNight

"Pasta and butter. Sometimes with grated parmesan." - RuthlessLidia

"Quesadilla." - babe_ruthless3

"Toast." - FrauAmarylis

"Pan fried tofu slabs braised in a pan with chopped kimchi, green onion, kimchi liquid or rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, bit of water to make it saucy, a tsp of sugar seems to help it meld together. Takes 10-12 min. Served over short grain rice. Optional toppings, toasted sesame seeds, chopped cilantro, sliced green onion. Edit: this was from The NY Times food, from Sue Li for exact proportions." - LavaPoppyJax

"Costco’s $1.50 hot dog and drink." - StarWolf478

"Rice and eggs for me too. It can be enjoyed in so many ways! My favorite is a crispy egg that’s still yolky on sushi rice with seaweed, salt and sesame oil." - theyrejusttoys

"For me it's an egg foo young - type dish! Stir raw eggs into leftover cooked vegetables (and optional protein, like leftover chicken or whatever you have). Ladle the mixture into a hot pan with a little oil, and fry up into patties. Serve over rice, and top with a drizzle of some kind of Asian sauce and a little hot pepper. You can look up a recipe for Egg Foo Young sauce, but that's not necessary; it tastes great with almost any kind of Asian sauce, or simply soy sauce. The cooked patties last for days in the refrigerator and can be reheated. Bonus: This is a fantastic way to use up any small bits of leftover veggies or meat. And if I have wilted vegetables that are in danger of spoiling, I just chop them up and quickly sauté them together, and freeze them in small containers. Now I have lots of veggies ready to go to make delicious egg foo young." - TIL_eulenspiegel

"For me, it’s instant noodles with a soft-boiled egg, some greens, and a splash of sesame oil. Dirt cheap but feels like comfort food every time!" - Wajid-H-Wajid

"Baked potatoes. So cheap, so good." - killyergawds

"Over-night oats. Eat it every morning before work." - Non_Binary_Goddess

"Nachos for the win." - HappyBear4Ever

"Rice and lentils cooked together." - RichCoast7186

"Potatoes, baked beans, fried eggs. Potatoes, corned beef, fried eggs. Rice (Mexican, Spanish, or Asian), beans, fried eggs. Cottage cheese, bran, frozen blueberries, milk. Home made salsa or pico de gallo on anything. Ground beef, rice, tomato and whatever else I have around. Rotisserie chicken, use the carcass to make soup with rice. Use the chicken that you can get off with tortillas and verde/enchilada sauce. With rice and beans. My advice, get really good at cooking rice, beans, and potatoes. Make sure you have a good selection of spices. Throw whatever extra money you have at whatever meats you can." - himthatspeaks

"Sweet potato black bean burrito a la moosewood. The most basic version is just a sweet potato and a can of black beans (but much better with an upgrade of caramelized onions and some cumin)." - Upbeat-Poetry7672

"Sardines on toast with a over easy egg." - Gandi1200

"Green bean casserole! Takes 10mins and lasts me all week for dinner and lunch." - Kihakiru

"Pan fried Spam, sunny side up egg, over rice. Furikake seasoning to taste." - Cajunsalmon

"I don't make meals I don't enjoy eating, but these are easy, quick, healthy and yummy. 1/2 rice , 1/2 red lentils + cubed veggies (frozen or fresh) eventually crushed tomatoes or coconut milk. Baked savory oats : shredded veggies +oats and eventually eggs or cheese or tomato sauce. Dhal sooooooo delicious. Split pea soup." - sohereiamacrazyalien


via James Breakwell/X

All parents have had similar convos with thier kiddos.

Raising kids is tough, but there's a lot of laughs along the way. Especially when actual conversations start, as kids begin trying to make sense out of the world around them, ask questions, and test mommy and daddy's resolve.

Back in 2018, comedy writer and children's book author James Breakwell, with four daughters who were all under the age of eight at the time, shared their hilarious conversations on X. From these tweets, it looks like comedy runs in the family. Here's a sampling of some Breakwell's funniest kid-inspired tweets.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

While Breakwell's 7-year-old wasn't as heavily featured, when she was quoted, the sarcasm was palpable. Which makes sense, considering that kiddos begin understanding this mechanism around that age.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Kids really do say the darnedest things, and we love them for it. It one of the many, many ways then bring so much joy to the world. It almost makes up for the headaches and sleepless nights, doesn't it.

This article originally appeared seven years ago.

Walt Disney and Ray Bradbury.

The world’s greatest innovators think and behave differently from us mere mortals. They have a unique view of the world and are dedicated to their craft in ways that most would deem obsessive. But without that type of dedication, Steve Jobs could never have given us the Macintosh, Michael Jordan would never have been able to fly, and Michelangelo would have never painted the Sistine Chapel.

It’s hard for the average person to understand what makes a cultural innovator tick, which is why an interview with groundbreaking author Ray Bradbury on Walt Disney is so inspiring. It lifts the veil on what great artists see in one another that most of us can’t. Bradbury is the acclaimed author of classics such as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, who was a friend of Disney and worked with his legendary company as a creative consultant.

What did Ray Bradbury think of Walt Disney?

In a 2004 interview, Bradbury explained where the incredibly ambitious and creative Disney got his drive and determination.


“If there’s any secret at all, it’s because Walt, like myself, is not an optimist but an optimal behaviorist. Which means that every day of your life, if you behave well, you begin to feel well,” Bradbury said. “So that’s not false, that’s real. You get your work done every day, and at the end of a week, a month, a year, you’ll turn around and say, hey, look what I did. So you feel good. That’s real optimism. Optimal behavior.”

“He could look back at the end of each year and see his behavior, and it made him want to go on. A lot of people are pessimists because they’ve never done anything,” Bradbury continued. “If you go to bed every night having not done anything, you’re going to wake up unhappy, aren’t you? So the answer to that is do something every day. Be busy, for God’s sake, be busy.”

 walt disney, disney world, mickey mouse, disney company, disney theme parks, A statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.via Paul Beattie/Flickr

What is a behavioral optimist?

Although “behavioral optimist” isn’t an official psychological term, it’s one that Bradbury often used to describe himself. “I’ve learned that by doing things, things get done. I’m not an optimist; I’m an optimal behaviorist. We ensure the future by doing it,” he said. “Optimists and pessimists are blind. But I’m not either. I’m an optimal behaviorist. In other words, I behave at the top of my lungs every day. There’s no guarantee, but you’re going to have a heck of a lot of fun. You’ll come to the end of your life with the secure knowledge that you tried everything.”

There are just two critical things in life, he said, “Being in love with your wife or husband and being in love with your work. And then everything’s fine.”

If you’ve always dreamed of living a life like Walt Disney, using your imagination to entertain and uplift humanity, you can start by looking at life in the same way. Big goals can often seem too lofty when we think about the finished product. Instead, take small, consistent steps every day towards achieving your goal. Writing a 300-page book may seem like too much work, but if you write a page a day, you’ll have a book before the end of the year. The key is to stay focused and consistent, just like Uncle Walt.

What an amazingly kind gesture.

Closed adoptions—meaning adoptions with no contact between the biological parents and adoptive families—offer privacy, protection and emotional closure. However, it can understandably still be incredibly difficult for biological mothers to instantly and drastically remove their biological child from their life, even if they know they are doing what's best.

This was the case for Alicia Mae Holloway’s biological mom. In a video shared to her TikTok account, the dancer and television personality shared that her adoptive mother, Evelyn, “saw how hard it was” for her birth mom to give Holloway up for adoption. So Evelyn came up with a kind gesture that Holloway dubbed “the sweetest thing.”

“She was like, ‘okay, I’ll make you a deal. Every six months, I’ll send you a picture of Alicia and a little update in a written card of how she’s doing.’”

Getting those biannual letters out wasn’t as simple as dropping them off in the mail either.

As Holloway explained, she had been conceived during an affair her birth mother—a white woman, married to a white man, with three white children—had with a Black man. Not only could Holloway’s birth mom not afford a fourth kid, she feared what her “racist” family might do upon seeing a biracial baby, and told everyone that it was a stillborn.

All this to say, Holloway’s birth mom didn’t want the letters arriving at her home, potentially risking anyone from her family seeing it. Evelyn would therefore need to send the letters to a friend’s house.

But sure enough, Evelyn kept good on that promise. For 17 years, Holloways' birth mom got to celebrate milestones in her daughter’s life. Meanwhile, Holloway had no idea this exchange was happening.

“I get chills when I think about how she was watching me grow up and I had no idea,” Holloway told Today. “She knew I was a dancer and that I was doing beauty pageants and that I was a good kid.”

Holloway added that just before her 18th birthday, she was made aware of her adoptive mom’s kind gesture. And they even went to meet Holloway’s birth mom, an event Holloway that noted was in many ways more emotional for her two moms than it was for her, recalling that both women “had a long, long, long embrace and were both bawling their eyes out.”

As for Holloway, she told Today that she feels no ill will towards her biological mom. Rather, she sees the decision as “an act of love," that set her up for a truly “amazing life.” At the end of their meeting, after the important questions pertaining to family health history and whatnot, all she had to say was “thank you.”

And from the looks of it, she is as happy as ever living life with her adopted parents, who honestly could pass for her biological parents any day.

It's interesting to think about how none of us know our full life story, how many things both bigs and small remain mysteries. But when we are lucky enough to discover hidden truths, we unlock yet another part of ourselves.

This article originally appeared last year.